Rudolf "Rudi" Gernreich (August 8, 1922 April 21, 1985) was an Austrian-born American fashion designer whose avant-garde clothing designs are generally regarded as the most innovative and dynamic fashion of the 1960s. He purposefully used fashion design as a social statement to advance sexual freedom, producing clothes that followed the natural form of the female body, freeing them from the constraints of high fashion.
He was known for the early use of vinyl and plastic in clothing, and for his use of cutouts. He designed the first thong bathing suit, unisex clothing, the first swimsuit without a built-in bra, the minimalist, soft, transparent No Bra, and the topless monokini. He was a four-time recipient of the Coty American Fashion Critics Award. He produced what is regarded as the first fashion video, Basic Black: William Claxton w/Peggy Moffitt, in 1966. He had a long, unconventional, and trend-setting career in fashion design.
He was a founding member of and financially supported the early activities of the Mattachine Society. He consciously pushed the boundaries of acceptable fashion and used his designs as an opportunity to comment on social issues and to expand society's perception of what was acceptable.
Early years Gernreich was the only child of Siegmund Gernreich and Elisabeth (née Müller) Gernreich, a Jewish couple who lived in Vienna, Austria. His father was a stocking manufacturer who had served in World War I and who died by suicide when Gernreich was eight years old.
Gernreich learned about high fashion from his aunt, Hedwig Müller, who with her husband Oskar Jellinek, owned a dress shop. He spent many hours in his aunt's shop sketching her designs for Viennese high society and learned about fabrics. He also gained early impressions of sexuality. He later told one of his favorite models, Leon Bing, about images of "leather chaps with a strap running between the buttocks of street laborers' work pants and the white flesh of women's thighs above gartered black stockings." When he was 12, Austrian designer Ladislaus Czettel saw his sketches and offered Gernreich a fashion apprenticeship in London, but his mother refused, believing her son was too young to leave home.
Jewish refugee
After the German Anschluss (when Nazi Germany annexed Austria) on 12 March 1938, Hitler, among many other acts, banned nudity. Austrian citizens were advocates of exercising nude, a rejection of the over-civilized world. His mother took 16-year-old Rudi and escaped to the United States as Jewish refugees, settling in Los Angeles, California. To survive, his mother baked pastries that Rudi sold door-to-door. His first job was washing bodies to prepare them for autopsy in the morgue of Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. He told Marylou Luther, "I grew up overnight. I do smile sometimes when people tell me my clothes are so body-conscious [that] I must have studied anatomy. You bet I studied anatomy." He attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied art and apprenticed for a Seventh Avenue clothing manufacturer. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1938 to 1941, and the Los Angeles Art Center School from 1941 to 1942.
Career
He briefly worked in Hollywood costume design, but hated it. In 1942, he joined the Lester Horton's modern dance company as both a dancer and designer. Gernreich said "I never was a very good dancer ... I wanted to become a choreographer, but that never happened." Of his time with the Theater, Gernreich said that dancing made him "aware of what clothes did to the rest of the body." He also designed freelance but left Lester Horton in 1948 and became a fabric salesman for Hoffman Company. Gernreich moved into fashion design from fabric design.
The fashion climate at that time was dictated by designers in Paris. In 1949 he briefly worked in New York at George Carmel but didn't like the position because he felt pressured to imitate Parisian fashion. Gernreich said, "Everyone with a degree of talent was motivated by a level of high taste and unquestioned loyalty to Paris. Dior, Fath, Balenciaga were gods—kings. You could not deviate from their look."
In 1951, still attempting to gain entry into the fashion world, Gernreich got a job with Morris Nagel to design for Versatogs, but Nagel required Gernreich to stick to the Versatogs design formula, which Gernreich hated.
He began designing his own line of clothes in Los Angeles and New York until 1951, when fellow Viennese immigrant Walter Bass in Beverly Hills convinced him to sign a seven-year contract with him. William Bass Inc. produced a collection of dresses that they sold to Jack Hanson, the owner of Jax, an emerging Los Angeles boutique that focused on avant-garde clothing that was fun and adventuresome. He also designed costumes for Lester Horton until 1952. For most of the 1950s, he collaborated with Hungarian Holocaust survivor and immigrant Renée Firestone in Los Angeles, before she started her own line in 1960.
In 1955, he began designing swimwear for Westwood Knitting Mills in Los Angeles. They hired him in 1959 as the swimwear designer. Genesco Corporation also hired him as a shoe designer in 1959. He completed his seven-year contract with Walter Bass in 1960 and founded his firm G.R. Designs in Los Angeles. He changed his company's name to Rudi Gernreich Inc. in 1964. His designs were featured in what is generally regarded as the first fashion video, Basic Black: William Claxton w/Peggy Moffitt, in 1966.
In the early 1960s, Gernreich opened a Seventh Avenue showroom in New York City where he showed his popular designs for Harmon knitwear and his own more expensive line of experimental garments. Gernreich wanted his designs to be affordable and in 1966, he broke American fashion's unwritten rule that name designers don't sell to chain stores. On January 3, 1966, he took the unprecedented action of signing a contract with Montgomery Ward, a chain store. Rudi's fashions proved popular and lasted several seasons, showing that original designs would sell at popular prices.
In 1966, Gernreich was named one of the "fashion revolutionaries" in New York by Women's Wear Daily, alongside Edie Sedgwick, Tiger Morse, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Baby Jane Holzer, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent, and Mary Quant. He designed the Moonbase Alpha uniforms worn by the main characters of the 1970s British science-fiction television series Space: 1999, pushing the boundaries of the futuristic look in clothing over the course of three decades.
Fashion as social commentary Gernreich developed strong feelings about society's sexualization of the human body and disagreed with religious and social beliefs that the body was essentially shameful. He wanted to reduce the stigma of a naked body, to "cure our society of its sex hang up," as he put it. Gerneich stated, "To me, the only respect you can give to a woman is to make her a human being. A totally emancipated woman who is totally free."
Gernreich approached fashion as a social commentary. He said, "I realized you could say things with clothes." Editors of Life magazine asked him to envision clothes in the future for its January 1, 1970, issue, and he produced designs of minimalist, unisex garments that could be worn by either men or women. He said he wanted to create a "utility principle" that would "take our mind off how we look and concentrate on really important matters." Fashion writer Marylou Luther, who became a good friend of Gernreich, wrote that he had two motives in his designs: one was to create modern fashion "for the 20th century and beyond," and the other was as "a social commentator, who just happened to work in the medium of clothes." Gernreich purposefully used his designs to advance his socio-political views.
Impact on fashion design During his career, he was compared in influence to these same fashion houses: Balenciaga, Dior, and André Courrèges, but he steadfastly refused to show his designs in Paris. Instead, he named Claire McCardell as his influence. Gernreich developed a reputation as an avant-garde designer who broke many design rules. As a former dancer, Gernreich was interested in liberating the body from the limitations of clothing. In 1952, while designing for Westwood, he introduced the first swimsuit without a built-in bra. Most swimsuits at the time had stiff inner construction with boned linings. His designs used elasticized wool knits that clung to the woman's body.
In its December 1962 issue, Sports Illustrated remarked, "He has turned the dancer's leotard into a swimsuit that frees the body. In the process, he has ripped out the boning and wiring that made American swimsuits seagoing corsets". He was regarded as the designer who freed women from the limits of high fashion by creating vibrant, young, "often daring clothing that followed the natural form of the female body."
Gernreich is regarded by some as the "most innovative and dynamic fashion designers of the 20th century." In 1964, he created the first topless swimsuit, which he called the "monokini". Gernreich was featured on the cover of Time in December 1967 with models Peggy Moffitt and Leon Bing. The magazine described him as "the most way-out, far-ahead designer in the U.S."
Cynthia Amnéus, Chief Curator and Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio, said "Rudi was one of the most important and visionary American fashion designers of the 21st century ... Rudi was doing very shocking and avant-garde things, like taking all the structure out of swimwear, and creating a trapeze dress in the 1950s way before Yves Saint Laurent did."
He worked closely with model Peggy Moffitt and her husband and photographer William Claxton for many years, pushing the boundaries of the "futuristic look" in clothing over the course of three decades. His work paired minimalist designs with bright, psychedelic colors and strong geometric patterns, pushing the boundaries of contemporary women's clothing. Moffitt increased the notoriety of his designs with avant-garde makeup and haircuts.
He was the sixth American designer to be elected to the Coty American Fashion Hall of Fame. He designed the first see-through chiffon blouse, fashioned clothes from leotards and tights, decorated them with zippers and dog leash clasps, and in 1970 introduced the idea of unisex clothing that was minimalist, utilitarian, and optional, including men's suits and hats for women. He showed his designs on a male and female model who were both shaved. He designed coordinated outfits of dresses, handbags, hats, and stockings. He was among the first to regularly use vinyl and plastic in clothes, used cut-out details, and designed the first soft, transparent bra — the No Bra.
In 1974, in response to Los Angeles banning nude beaches, he designed and named the first thong bathing suit that exposed the buttocks for both men and women. Gernreich patented the thong design but gave up enforcing his rights due to legal difficulties. From 1970 to 1971 he designed furnishings for Fortress and Knoll International, and in 1975 he designed men's style underwear for Lily of France.
The next year he worked on cosmetics for Redken and costumes for the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company, along with kitchen accessories and ceramic bathroom accessories. Gernreich continued to collaborate with Lewitzky, designing sets and costumes for Pas de Bach in 1977, Rituals in 1979, Changes & Choices in 1981, and Confines in 1982, all danced by the WCK3.
Monokini